


Proofing

by elistaire



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Gen, Post-The Gathering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 12:13:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19062454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elistaire/pseuds/elistaire
Summary: It takes a civilization to make bread.MacLeod's rebuilding in his kitchen, starting with his own oven.And Joe can't sit on the couch, it's occupied.





	Proofing

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published 2003

“Mac?” Joe asked, his voice laced through with worry and concern.

MacLeod turned to look at him, flashed a smile, and then went back to what he was doing – kneading dough.

Joe ambled further into the warm room, clasping his revolver in one hand. The loft was filled with the heady, yeasty scent of baking bread. Wooden bowls covered with tea towels were everywhere; a light dusting of flour coated the entire kitchen. Several loaves of bread were already stacked to the side. Bâtard. Baguette. Boule. 

Nothing made any sense to him at all. A week ago the Gathering had closed with a terrible fury, blood soaking the soil and staining blades of grass. The terrible loss of all but one Immortal inking its way though the world, vociferous nations quelling to a polite silence for a short time, as if a collective breath was being held.

Joe stood in the open area of the loft and watched MacLeod’s hands deftly turning and twisting the dough in front of him. 

MacLeod had won. He had come through the battle, spattered with blood and drenched in loss, and he had promptly vanished into his loft for a week. Joe had thought that at any moment, MacLeod would emerge and at least announce that he had won the Prize, be it unimaginable power or nothing at all, or a cherry-red lollipop on a stick. But it hadn’t happened, and Joe had finally brazened his way into the loft, prepared for the worst, expecting that MacLeod might be dead, catatonic with grief or drunk or…something. Well, something other than happily domestic and baking bread.

“Mac?” he asked again, wondering if he’d wandered too close to pull the gun up for a shot if MacLeod did suddenly turn out to be feral.

MacLeod paused in kneading the dough and started absently pulling it apart and into pieces. “I’m a little busy at the moment, Joe. Do you mind sitting for a bit?”

“Sure, buddy,” Joe said, slightly uncertain, and eyed the couch since it looked like the marathon baking session was just in its infancy.

“Not the couch,” Mac said, looking up and smiling at the couch. “Methos is there.”

Joe swung his head around. “What?” He looked at the empty couch and then back to MacLeod. “Mac, Methos isn’t…. I mean, I thought you knew….” 

Joe felt fear churn in his gut as a sudden, terrible understanding wormed through his mind. Methos had died over a week ago, cut down by treachery and vengeance on Cassandra’s part in something that was a hideous shamble and nothing even remotely related to a fair Challenge. MacLeod had been here in Seacouver, thousands of miles away, but he had to have known. Joe was sure he had known. He had watched as MacLeod had been wracked with spasms in an odd parody of a seizure for ten minutes, an ominous portent to the subsequent call which had come through from the Watchers. But the Gathering had been in full rage then, shuttering out every emotion but blood lust and homicidal glee.

MacLeod looked suddenly quizzical, hands pausing over his baking task. “Joe?”

Joe pointed to the hard backed chair, which would be easier for him to get out of anyway. “That one clear?”

MacLeod nodded and returned his attention to his task. A moment later he began to speak, almost absently. “There are a lot of ways to knead dough, did you know, Joe?”

“Um, no.” Joe felt very confused. Mac seemed mostly lucid, but his behavior was off the scale.

“Yes. So many cultures, so many breads. It has to be done; it has to be worked for it to become bread. You can twist it.” MacLeod began to demonstrate the different ways with the ivory colored dough beneath his hands. “Or pull it apart. Pinch off bits and crush it back together. Slap it down repeatedly. Stretch and gather. Or just push and roll, back and forth.” He stretched the dough out

“That’s interesting, Mac. But why are you kneading dough?”

MacLeod gave him a strange look, as if he’d asked an absurd question. 

Joe tried another track. “Mac, how about we go outside for a while?”

“When I’m done,” MacLeod replied in a tone that brooked no argument.

“Ah, okay,” Joe said and decided to go for broke. “What does Methos say about all this?”

MacLeod shrugged. “About what you’d expect. Yeast is usually put to better use in beer.”

Joe frowned at that and looked to the couch. Still empty. “He’s said that recently?” 

MacLeod gave him another are-you-an-idiot look and a derisive snort. 

“Okay, then.” He settled back to wait and to watch. Obviously, MacLeod wasn’t in the mood to explain himself.

It was sometime later that Joe realized he’d fallen asleep in the chair and now he’d woken up feeling groggy and slightly disoriented. His back was stiff, his shoulders ached, and his legs cried out to be taken care of, but he could hear whispers in the now dark loft and so he dared not move.

“Please, eat some more,” MacLeod was quietly pleading. “Just a few bites.”

Except for the creaking of leather and the cracking and breaking of bread crust, there was silence for a long moment. Then MacLeod spoke again. “Just one more bite. For me.” Another moment of silence passed. “Thank you. Soon. Soon.”

Joe saw the dark shadow that was MacLeod move about the loft in the last dregs of evening’s twilight. MacLeod reached over to a light and clicked it on.

Joe blinked in the sudden brightness.

“Hungry, Joe?” MacLeod asked as he passed him and went back into the kitchen. 

Joe cleared his throat. “A little, yeah. Spare some of that bread for me?”

MacLeod frowned at him as if he’d made an offensive remark. “No, there isn’t enough as it is. Later, I promise, I’ll make a loaf especially for you. For now though, I have some fruit.” He opened the refrigerator door and pulled out several oranges and pears, setting them in a bowl next to Joe’s elbow. 

Joe eyed the fruit. The smell of the continuously baking bread made it hard to see the fruit as appetizing. He chose a pear, found it cold and juicy, and that it tasted better than any meal he could have imagined.

MacLeod was watching him with a bemused smile. “Fruit is so simple, isn’t it?”

“I guess, sure,” Joe answered, the tart papery feel of the pear flesh still on his tongue.

“Find a tree or a bush with fruit. Allow it to ripen in the sun. Pluck it from the branch.” MacLeod pantomimed the motion of eating a piece of fruit. “So basic.” He began to move about the kitchen again, peeking beneath floury tea towels, frowning at some and nodding at others, often poking a finger down the side to press into firm, sticky dough.

Joe took another bite of pear and considered MacLeod’s words. His gaze wandered over to the couch, where it looked as if an entire loaf of bread had been crumbled to bits. He glanced back at MacLeod. The man had gone loony. The Gathering had undone him, and if there ever had been a Prize, it was lost now to this man’s insane fascination with bread.

“Just like bread, right?” he asked huskily, wondering if he would be able to get up and just walk out. 

MacLeod laughed then and he sounded so much like his old self that Joe paused in his escape machinations. 

“Not like bread at all,” MacLeod said, humor and warmth rising in the words. “It seems so simple, though, doesn’t it?” He turned to his work space and pulled a portion of expanded dough from a bowl, and began to work the dough with his hands. Nimbly, he pulled the dough across his work surface, the skin of the dough stretching taut as he shaped it, then he rolled it on its side and used the blade of his hand to seal it. He repeated this procedure with a half dozen batches of dough, all the while patiently explaining. “But it isn’t easy at all. First you need water, fresh water. And each place in the world has its own water, its own flavor and taste. A pinch of salt, not always available and a rare enough commodity that it was once used as currency. Then you need flour. Fields of grain. Reaping and sowing, ever dependent on the soil and the sun. Fearful of hungry insects. Too much rain. Not enough rain. So many things.” 

Joe watched as MacLeod moved bowls all around the room, processing each step in the industrious bread making factory that was going on. MacLeod was pulling out several baking stones from his oven, already crowned with golden loaves of bread, the scent off them fairly tangible in the small loft. And even though Joe had smelled baking bread for hours already, his mouth began to water.

“Then the grain must be harvested and milled. Ground between stones to a fine dust. Grist mills, if you were lucky.” Duncan slid the loaves to the side to cool and gently placed the risen dough loaves onto the already cooling stones. Something flashed between his fingers, and a few flicks of the wrist later, the loaves were scored in the shape of lightning strikes.

“Then you needed an oven. Fuel to keep the oven going, usually wood that had to be chopped and stacked. The labor involved is staggering, even without considering the effort and time involved in proofing, kneading, rising, shaping, and baking.”

Joe licked his lips, his eyes fixated on the crusty bread and wondered if MacLeod had any butter. He felt slightly insulted. Wasn’t he good enough for all that effort? MacLeod had so many loaves around already, although even the oldest hardly seemed a few hours old. And MacLeod’s only goal seemed to be to waste it by crumbling it all over his furniture.

MacLeod slid the baking stones into the oven and closed the door. Almost perfunctorily he set a timer, although Joe had yet to notice it go off once. MacLeod was keeping a keen eye on his bread.

“Haven’t you forgotten something,” he asked, mentioning the absent ingredient even as he noticed it.

MacLeod smiled and the smile reached his eyes. “Not at all.” He pulled a little dish, uncovered, from the edge of the island counter. A sticky mass of pale goop bubbled within the dish, a thin sheen of straw colored liquid on top. 

“Proofing your yeast?” Joe asked softly, recognizing the contents.

MacLeod nodded. “A kind of magic.” He made puffing and sprinkling motions with his fingers. “Mix equal parts water and flour and let sit for a few days.” He studied Joe’s eyes intently. “And from the very air, the catalyst.” MacLeod returned the bowl of starter to its corner of honor. “Any old beast can eat fruit from the tree. It takes a civilization to create bread.”

Joe shifted in his chair, still cramped from his impromptu nap, and felt his stomach growl. “Mac, come on. How about a slice of bread? It smells wonderful.”

MacLeod looked him over again, a ghost of a smile hinting on his face, but he shook his head sadly. “No, Joe. Not this time. Why don’t you go home and come back later?”

Common sense dictated then over hunger and Joe remembered that MacLeod appeared to have gone over the edge of sanity and into some June Cleaver tinted world. Joe stretched and got to his feet slowly, all his joints complaining, and limped over to the lift. He paused just outside, determined to make one last effort. 

“Mac, about the Gathering-“

“No.” MacLeod cut him off. “I’m not done yet.” He turned away and Joe knew that he wasn’t just being ignored, but that MacLeod’s sole focus had returned to his baking task.

Joe left the building, gingerly getting into his car, and found himself not driving home, but driving around searching for the nearest bakery. It was late, and he doubted that he would find one open, but to his eventual surprise there was one lone bakery with a light on. 

He stepped into the shop and breathed in the warm air, saturated with magic and effort. He bought three loaves of ciabatta, although he knew he could hardly eat one, and finally went home.

The next morning, he toasted the remains of the uneaten bread, slathered on yellow pats of butter, and wondered that he hadn’t thought to eat toast in a long, long time. He found some homemade strawberry jam squirreled away in his pantry, the top still dusty, but looking safe to eat. When he couldn’t eat anymore and after he’d cleaned up the buttery, sticky crumbs, he headed back to MacLeod’s loft.

Joe felt deflated and his heart felt raw as he stood outside the building. The warm scent of bread wafted everywhere, seemingly permeated into the very concrete of the sidewalk and brick of the building. Still baking, he thought sadly to himself and wondered what one did with the last Immortal alive when all he would do was remain shut up in his home and produce bread.

He walked to the lift, pulled the door down, and closed his eyes as he rode up. How many loaves could a man bake in one night in a home oven? MacLeod had money, he could order in flour and salt, pay his bills to heat the oven. The magic yeast would come from the air. He never had to leave his loft again. Joe felt an insane chuckle rise from his gut. Where would all the bread go? It would not be long before MacLeod would start to run out of room. Eventually the man would have to let someone take the bread away. He envisioned the entire loft, floor to ceiling stacked with loaves of bread. Pigeons would start to attack soon.

With this ridiculous thought in his head, Joe raised the gate, and stepped into the loft and stopped dead in his tracks.

“Hey, Joe!” greeted Methos, oven mitts on both hands and a smudge of flour covering one cheek and making him look like a mischievous child. He bent low and took out the baking stones from the oven, perfectly golden loaves with lightning scars perched on each.

MacLeod waved a sticky hand, although his attention only briefly wavered from Methos’ activities, and went back to kneading the dough in front of him. “Hello, Joe,” he called. “Have a seat. We’re a little busy at the moment.”

Joe dazedly began to move into the living area, fuzzily remembering his nap the day before and eyeing the couch.

“Oh,” Methos called from the kitchen and Joe could see that he had one hand in the dough that MacLeod was expending effort on while MacLeod grinned happily. Methos waved his unoccupied hand and a small glop of dough flew off into space. “Don’t sit on the couch. Amanda is there.”


End file.
